California exodus left a gaping population hole. Can the Golden State bounce back?
Though the state population grew 0.17% in 2023 — the first year of growth since the COVID-19 pandemic — California is still 1.2% smaller than it was in 2019.... Experts said it’s still hard to know how quickly the state can rebound.
Oh ffs. California is 1.2% smaller? Who cares? It's certainly one way to ease our housing shortage.
LAUSD parents and teachers in uproar over timed academic testing for 4-year-olds
This month in her transitional kindergarten class at L.A. Unified, student Maria Arriaga will be timed to see how many uppercase and lowercase letters she can name in a minute. She’ll be tested to see if she can sound out nonsense words like vot, pag and lem, and asked to read sight words like young, speak and known.
It’s a test intended for kindergarteners, but Maria is only 4 years old.
In San Francisco they spent years trying to forbid bright middle schoolers from learning algebra. In LA, we're testing 4-year-olds to see if they can read yet.
What's the deal with kindergarten these days? My (admittedly extremely vague) memory is that my generation spent kindergarten doing finger painting, taking naps, and playing with crayons and paste. Today we're disappointed if preschoolers aren't solving differential equations.
Do I have any longtime kindergarten teachers in my audience? How much have things really changed in the last 50 years?
Kindergarten teacher spouse here, so not a firsthand account but the gist of what I hear from my wife: less play time and a lot more focus on academics during the past ten years or so. Also, more trouble with highly disruptive kids than in the past. No idea if those two trends are related, but perhaps.
Is there some commonality among the highly disruptive kids, or is it that the rest less disruptive so the disruptive ones stand out?
Just a note. I was talking to a parent of a 4 year old. He noted there was a difference between kids who have been to pre-school and those who have not. Those who've been can play together without too much strife. Those who haven't, well, haven't learned to share yet.
I'd also add, this is also a function of smaller families, so socializing is now done in pre-school.
@cld
I don't know.
In California:
EDC 49005.4.
An educational provider may use seclusion or a behavioral restraint only to control behavior that poses a clear and present danger of serious physical harm to the pupil or others that cannot be immediately prevented by a response that is less restrictive.
What this translates to is that the teacher can’t physically take the highly disruptive child to the principal’s office. So they are in the classroom longer, until their parents come or they calm down on their own.
Not in CA, but what I typically see is the rest of the class taken out of the room and behavior specialists being called in. It's not that common, because most kids who completely lose it choose to run out of the classroom.
My mom was a preschool teacher for her whole career, and is adamant that kindergarten is for social development full stop. Academic training at that age is basically pointless at best, and often counterproductive.
My main recommendation to the other California parents in their little gunner enclaves full of hypercompetitive parents pushing ever younger kids into more and more intense academics: chill out and make it clear to your kids that that isn't what you are looking for from them. Doesn't hurt to let the teacher in on your attitude either, they will likely agree.
"How much have things really changed in the last 50 years?"
I'm not a kindergarten teacher, but as a kid, I saw my parents college texts in a bookcase at home. They were learning algebra.
I had two years of calculus in high school.
The young college kids I meet as interns are scary smart.
Kids are getting smarter as the years go by. It's something in the water.
Either that, or constant exposure to enriched environments is showing the potential of the human brain.
Just imagine what we could accomplish if we weren't surrounded by punitive morons with megaphones, constantly shouting insane BS in our ears.
Smarter, but still kids, so a bit sophomoric. Not too bratty--less lead.
????????????????????
I had the same experience reading my daughter's high school textbooks. My grand daughter was taking pre calc in the 8th grade.
College Algebra is still taught and in fact is the largest math course my institution teaches. No one in high school is required to take calculus so those who do anyway are necessarily outliers. You shouldn't take that as your standard.
Yeah, we didn't have calculus courses in HI in high school in the late 60s. I took a couple of summer semester intensives in it at University of Hawaii on Oahu. I had already learned to type well in HS the year before I started the calculus courses -
A very good investment! The senior professor at the math department of MIT decided that he wanted to "pioneer" a new technique for teaching calculus (hoping to publishing an academic wonder. (And burnishing his credentials.) /s
Most of the MIT faculty that needed serious calculation chops, with calculus as a major weapon in the kit. were absolutely furious! None of their students who were learning calculus the first time at MIT, had the knowledge to deal with the problems they were required to solve in a LOT of other courses.
It got so bad that most of the course lines created their own "classic" calculus courses. Those of us who had already gotten trained before coming saved a lot of time - and at University of Hawaii vs. MIT rates - saved a lot of money.
I don't think he ever published his tome. Good thing!
I have a vivid memory of my first day of kindergarten, when at least two kids burst into tears upon being informed their names weren't 'Sugar Bunny', or something.
I have a vivid memory from 1st grade. I don't know what the boy said but the teacher yanked him out of the seat and yelled at him. Learned me to sit down and shut up.
Yes, teaching kids to read in kindergarten instead of first grade is being "disappointed if preschoolers aren't solving differential equations".
Should we stop reading books to toddlers because parents didn't use to do that 50 years ago too? Maybe if you don't feed lead to kids they can do better, I'd have expected you to understand that.
Oldster here, but my remembrance of Kindergarten was a half day session. One teacher, who taught both a morning and afternoon session. Play time, nap time. socialization skills, some reading, math and beginning printing and cursive. Can't recall any testing.
And I walked the few blocks to school.
Back in the day when everyone practiced "free range parenting".
My kindergarten class was in the morning, and a neighbor girl a few years older walked me the five blocks to the school.
When I got out of class at noon, I couldn't find my way home, so I just waited in the schoolyard until she got out at 3:30.
My mother never noticed I was gone. Lol. Or more likely, she was happy for the respite.
I walked through a very nice neighborhood about 3.5 tenths of a mile to public school kindergarten in 1960. The teacher taught my father kindergarten 38 years before. I remember naps (which I hated because I couldn't sleep so it was boring) and show and tell (which I hated even more because I didn't like anything I had, so why should I show it?). I also remembert that I was the class trouble maker. But in first grade I was the teacher's pet.
2nd grade was at the Catholic school, where I was informed that my name was not Ricky and in the future I would put Richard on my paper. I went home and asked Mom how to spell Richard. Dad dropped us off at the Catholic School, but we walked the mile home.
All of grade school was boring because they rarely presented information I didn't already know (I read a lot.) Ironically, my grades suffered. Then when the material taught was new to me, my study skills were so bad that my grades suffered.
Somehow I doubt there was cursive in kindergarten. I'm the last of the baby boomers and definitely there was no reading by the students. Being read to from picture books, definitely. How to use the phone. (Always let it ring 8 time so the elderly have time to get to the sole phone in the house.) Basic safety lessons (Always look both was before you cross the street.) How to tie your shoes using buster brown fake shoes. (I failed that because my arm was in a cast.) How to print the alphabet. ( I was put with the special ed kids because I was still failing that in grade 1)
And if so many people are fleeing California, why is rush hour traffic as bad as ever? Or traffic period?
Right? Bring on the exodus. California losing population is not a problem anyone here weeps over. Especially if they're crabby book banning conservatives. It's not like their vote counts in this liberal state, but the waste a lot of time at school board meetings and tear communities apart.
A bunch of right wing types moving to Montana doesn’t scare me at all. A couple of million brown people getting rounded up by the Florida National Guard scares the shit out of me.
They obviously not going to limit themselves to "brown people". They will also tak "white people" (and any other "color") that don't follow the pary line.
This "red states national guard used for dealing with immigrants" is an acronym for SS.
Ultimately, no one is pure enough for the purist party.
They will consume their own, for insufficient faith.
This is why their leaders end up alone, in a bunker, as the armies close in.
"Gaping hole," eh? CA is currently pegged at about 39 million population, so if it's down 1.2%, the peak was about 470,000 more. Who's going to notice a difference that small in a mass that big? You'd be hard pressed in day-to-day life to notice a drop of half a million even if everybody who left was from metro LA, which at just under 13 million has as many people as Pennsylvania. The most noticeable effect might be a decline in tax revenue, but even that doesn't seem like it'd be all that pronounced unless the exodus was from Silicon Valley.
So put me in the "ffs" camp. Maybe the editorial board should put its apparent interchange with the WSJ on hold and do the practical experiment of filling a bottle with 1000 marbles, then surreptitiously taking out 12 of them and seeing if anyone notices.
Just to add, it'd be different if they were coming in at the same pace every year. That's roughly the situation in Canada, about the same population. It's all concentrated in about half a dozen or so metro areas that are almost all short on housing already, and federal policy is to encourage immigration. The metro areas there would probably breathe a big sigh of relief if some of that pressure eased.
Canada has in fact recently reversed course on immigration precisely because of the housing shortage.
It truly boggles the mind that Canada has a housing shortage, given how much empty land there is in the country. What an epic fail.
Vacant land is not scarce in the US either. The problem is that much of the vacant land in both Canada and the US is in places where few people want to live. For instance one state, Alaska, accounts for one-sixth of US land area but about one five-hundredth of US population. Few people want to live there.
Even when there is vacant land, housing still costs $200 or so per square foot to build. Even the most basic house is an expensive proposition.
Great comparison. I haven't missed anyone and the topic literally never ever comes up in any conversation.
There is an existential crisis facing California. If Trump becomes President he says he will deport about 8% of our population. He says he will use the National Guards of red states to facilitate this. Approximately 50% of unauthorized residents have been here over 10 years. They work, have children who were born here and contribute to the state. This has the potential of being unbelievably ugly.
You got that right.
The Germans made a tragic mistake when they let Hitler take power in 1933. But they had an excuse. The economy was in free fall. Full-time employment had dropped from 20 million to 11 million. Wages had fallen 39%. They were desperate people in desperate times.
Today the US has record job growth, inflation under 4%, stocks near all-time highs. By most measures, we are living in the best economy in generations. If we let Trump take power again, we will go down as the stupidest fucking generation in the history of the world.
The people who liked Hitler are still with us, and always will be.
It doesn't take an economic depression for them to think the way they do.
Once upon a time, the people who didn't like Hitler vastly outnumbered the people who did.
Now it's a slim margin at best. No depression, last I looked. For a lot of people, it's "Hitler, Schmitler, paying for DoorDash five nights a week is putting a crimp in my style. Make America great again."
I get the impression that Mussolini is sort of the ideal. Trump may not be great, but at least he made trains ... disappear along with those annoying windmill and solar farms.
Trump clearly prefers Hitler. He read a book with Hitler's speeches, there is a record of him praising Hitler (not in public), and he uses language taken from Nazi propaganda.
He is apparenetly not impressed by Mussolini that much.
Lately he’s been expressing a lot of admiration for “The late great Hannibal Lecter” and his fans love it. I truly feel like I’ve been transferred to Bizzaro World.
I wish that this sort of thing would get more coverage. Trump isn't some quirky guy where we should chuckle a bit and scratch our heads at why he said this latest strange thing. He's fucking delusional and has difficulty distinguishing fiction from reality.
Somewhere along the line, he imagined that Anthony Hopkins liked him, but he forgot that Anthony Hopkins was a real person, and that Hannibal Lector was a character Hopkins had played, but even that is buried in the fog of his brain at this point, so he goes around talking about Hannibal Lector being late and great. Because to Trump, "Hannibal Lector" is some actual person he thinks he remembers.
Recall when he was yammering about duct taped women and prayer rugs and supercharged muscle cars at the border? It was because he saw Sicario Day of the Soldato (which contains those elements) and wasn't able to parse that it was a movie and not real.
The man is extremely, extremely stupid.
Generally agree, but I remember that early in his term (and particularly at one State of the Union) there were times when he would strut around the platform, stare out, and flash profile shots very much a la Mussolini.
Probably just a passing infatuation, though. His dream role models have been the ones like Hitler and Kim Jong Un who commanded spectacles, vast regimented crowds hanging on their every word and applauding ecstatically in unison (because they had to). Poisoned by the newsreels of his youth, no doubt.
And anyway, I think if he had to choose, he'd rather end it with self-administered poison, versus hanging upside-down on meathooks in a public square-- too much of a loser's move.
That is untrue, Trump has never read a book in his life.
But Fox and other conservative media have them thinking they are in a depression. Plus inflation is very visible, more visible than some extra money in your pay.
I remember that our first day in class the teach read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel and when she asked if there were any questions afterwards, one of the other kids raised her hand and asked when did Mike go to the bathroom.
yes, kids start to learn to read in kindergarten in the urban school system where I live. they are exposed to more academics earlier in the hopes that more will stick. Preschools usually have one of two philosophies-- either a play model or a learning model. Public schools are usually more of the learning model-again to expose kids earlier. Sometimes they are ready, sometimes not.
I didn't go to kindergarten. I think the first in our family to go to kindergarten was my younger sister, who was 7 years younger than me. But I started school when I was still 4.
Yeah, at least in our local schools, kindergarten is more focused on learning academic skills then when I was in it. (And mine was only half day, where ours is full day now.) I assume that's a nationwide trend. Part of it may be an emphasis on getting early literacy rates up -- I've been told that very few of the 1st graders that are below grade level ever get fully caught up.
Whether a timed test is appropriate for kindergarten is in some sense an interesting question, but not something I'd get particularly excited about.
My kids' district is moving to offer more PreK. There was already a lot of academics in Kindergarten, and it's moving down into PreK. The teachers I've talked to really hate it. They want early childhood education to focus more on the building blocks of academics: social skills, self control, and learning vocabulary via the teacher reading stories and imaginative play. It's an urban district, so many kids are learning English for the first time as well. Meanwhile the district is pushing lots of academic work and evaluations.
Honestly, I think it sets up a lot of kids to fail. Sitting still at age 4 is hard enough; adding reading to sitting still is just designed to make kids hate school. And the academic goals make a lot of parents paranoid about their kids. Many very bright kids just aren't ready to read until age 6. This is one reason that redshirting has become so popular. Richer parents can afford to pay for another year of daycare, so their kids get to wait to learn to read when their brains are ready for it.
If we could get every child to a point where they can share, get along with others, not bully, and manage impulse control - then we can work on educating them.
I agree but why are you talking about Trump?
+1
I'm with your teachers on this one - social/self-discpline skills before academic development.
Lots of kids (not all by any means, but lots) can read before they start kindergarten. It would seem worthwhile for the teachers to know which kids can read, and how well, although I would think they could figure that out without the need for formal testing.
It's been my experience that most any kid can begin learning to read by the age of four, three for the precocious. The secret sauce is -- whadda surprise -- parental involvement.
My sister taught me to read using a sponge. I have no idea how she did it, because I don't remember, but I can read - and well! Thanks, big sis!
I could certainly read when I entered kindergarten. I assumed at the time all my classmates could, but I'm sure that wasn't true. Not sure why testing kids when they start is a bad thing. Don't really see the downside.
Oh, and I hated nap time. I never slept and as close as I can tell no one else did either. I actually talked with my friends about it at the time. They always agreed it was silly. Maybe kindergartners in olden times needed a nap?
The teacher needed a nap. I know most of the kids in my kindergarten (1969) did nap by the amount of trouble I got in since I was not capable of sitting still through any naps.
Quintilian (Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, c. 35 – c. 100 AD). On training in oratory (Institutio Oratoria):
"I am not however so blind to differences of age as to think that the very young should be forced on prematurely or given real work to do.
Above all things we must take care that the child, who is not yet old enough to love his studies, does not come to hate them and dread the bitterness which he has once tasted, even when the years of infancy are left behind."
My kindergarten 1955-56, only "academics" I recall was identifying colors and learning to write our names so we could put them on our various projects. Field trips to a bakery and a railroad roundhouse.
My oldest grand daughter's kindergarten 2005-2006? Among many other tasks she was expected to be able to write a coherent paragraph. (Which often still eludes me to some extent, obviously.)
We had to memorize our address and phone number as well. Not a bad idea even for those of us who were walkers, which was most of us.
This post combines the classic "That Thing You're Worried About Doesn't Bother Me, Kevin Drum" with a new but increasingly common "That Thing That Doesn't Matter Annoys the Hell Out of Me, Kevin Drum".
“In San Francisco they spent years trying to forbid bright middle schoolers from learning algebra.”
That’s true, but who is “they”?
Admittedly, it can be risky to try and accurately dissect a socio-political movement. Also, in some cases there are no broadly accepted terms for the group or groups involved.
But, using the terminology that seems accurate to me, I would lay the blame squarely at the feet of Leftists.
We’re not just talking about CA, we’re talking about San Francisco. The bogeyman of Conservatism cannot fairly be blamed for the educational disasters there. The central social tensions are between Liberals and Leftists. And it’s the Leftists who own that algebra debacle (among others).
That being the case, why not say so? Why not at least try to name the guilty parties so as to better understand who they are and how to grapple with them?
Because it’s not just algebra. The assault against algebra, as I understand, was undertaken largely if not entirely in the name of “anti-racist” equity. Certain races were generally doing worse at math; so, rather than help them improve, the standards were lowered for everyone.
And that same principle led an earlier iteration of San Francisco’s School board to remove entrance exams from (at least) one of their prestigious high schools.
Asians did notoriously well on such entrance exams, so they were accused of adopting the tactics of white supremacy. Because it’s simply not allowed among Ibram Kendi’s anti-racist acolytes to admit that there could be anything in an Asian’s culture or work ethic that enables them to better succeed.
Instead, if one or more races are doing better than the black race then it MUST be the fault of racist systems, and those systems (along with their algebra requirements and their entrance exams) must all be torn down. Because equity! And anyone who complains is an anti-woke Conservative! Or something.
Needless to say, the majority of Liberals even in San Francisco detest Leftist anti-racists to such a degree that several school board members were recalled (after trying to remove Abraham Lincoln’s name from a High School - because apparently it’s time to cancel Lincoln. Seriously).
And all this ridiculousness, no matter how unpleasant, should be understood. So why doesn’t Kevin actually name the perpetrators?
We have an election to win. And if Biden is to win, he needs to differentiate himself not just from MAGA but also from the deeply unpopular segments of the Left. Kevin could help with that if he had the nerve to name the culprits on his own side.
It’s like in Harrison Bergeron, the short story by Kurt Vonnegut. No one is allowed to stand out so talented people have to wear ankle weights and such to result in a fair society.
@Chondrite23:
Yes, as best I remember that story, it does seem tragically apt.
"The Left, they will always be with you."
Political philosophy is less like a teeter-totter and more like an Ouroboros, where the extreme Left head is eating the extreme Right tail, and both are down at the bottom of the circle in the Deplorables Bleachers.
They hate each other so incandescently because each models the secret excesses of the other.
Well my kid is 10 days away from finishing kindergarten and he told me he's bored now and wants first grade. Its a spanish immersion one to so even though numbers are the same its our responsibility to make sure he can read english. Anyhow his metrics are things like can count backwards and forwards to 50 and can sound out words. Can follow a read story (i.e. tell you what happened and why not literary analysis). Basic addition and subtraction.
Our kid went to preschool and we kept him back a year since thats recomended for boys. So he graduates at age 6 and turns 7 in the summer.
Behaviorally the kid actually tries to help the disruptive kids sometimes. Sadly life has now taught him that sometimes the thanks you get is a thrown fist.
Sounds like a great kid to grow with.
My only clear memory of kindergarten (NYC public school, mid-1950s) was the day there was a turd on the floor.
After asking who did it and getting no answer, she lined us up, pulled down our pants one at a time, until she found the culprit. A wimpy little guy, terrified at being singled out like that.
Now that’s something a teacher wouldn’t get away with today, and it’s probably a good thing. I’ve always wondered if that incident poisoned the rest of that kid’s life.
I attended kindergarten in the early 90s, and we were taught to write letters and numbers. That was the only academic work that I recall.